


shrimp noodles

by orphan_account



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Cybernetics, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Polyamory, Recovery, Relationship of Convenience, Rhys Makes Questionable Life Choices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-11 21:46:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16860874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: rhys gets his new arm. vaughn reconsiders their relationship in the aftermath.





	shrimp noodles

**Author's Note:**

> for axo.

Rhys wouldn't know how to go about obtaining an office as big as Dr. Autohn's but he is certain that he didn't earn it by observing the oath. But that's the thing about Hyperion -- it's a culture of stepping on toes.  Results are measured in piles of bodies. And Rhys certainly rode roughshod over a few to make a name for himself. The children of Helios don't ask questions.

Dr. Autohn's wing is daunting like something terminal. It occupies the whole of Helios' medbay. It is composed of towering ceilings and frameless glass windows that make Rhys feel as small as a moonstone particle. The smell of industrial-grade bleach pervades the air. It covers the smell of blood but it exudes the walls like damp. Rhys is a hair's breadth from spending his quarterly bonus on a pair of nice shoes and a haircut but his ego hurts just thinking about it.

The view of Pandora is perfect from here. Elpis doesn't eclipse it and Helios doesn't pursue her like a metal disease. Pandora is an ungovernable mistress. She builds a grey-white castle around him and nothing can penetrate it. Not appeals to reason. Not second doubts. Not the dying people of Eridium Blight.

"We have high hopes for this series, Rhys. It's our most sophisticated prosthesis to date. We aim for it to be capable of a larger range of motion than an organic arm. Stronger too. You're extremely lucky to be considered for an opportunity like this." Rhys doesn't like how he speaks. This a sales pitch.

Dr. Autohn hauls an imitation of a cybernetic arm out of his desk. Rhys tries its weight. It's surprisingly heavy and thickset, twice the size of his own arm. Four blocky cubes constitute a finger.

It reminds Rhys of the skewered skag meat his colleagues would bring back from Pandoran business trips. He imagines his digits diced on a chopping board and held together with metal and his stomach uproots and relocates to his throat. He feels like his shoes are filled with blood. He thinks of Hugo with his golden pinky and his receding hairline and inventories the fingers. 

"So, what do you think?"

"It's, uh. It's really something." Rhys finds himself caught on a fresh thread of panic and toys with his collar.

"It's comprised of three hydraulics." He uses a long fingernail and Rhys' arm to demonstrate his words, regarding the limb with a butcher's affection. "One in the shoulder, the wrist and the elbow. As for the fingers, they're pneumatic."

"But how does it work, exactly?"

"It's packed with sensors and microprocessors that pick up neural signals from your central nervous system when you think about moving your arm. We're developing exercises that will enable you to train your brain to connect to the ECNOnet with a thought but we'll deal with that post-operative."

"That sounds simple."

"It is."

"You wanna hear something funny, doc?"

"Not really but go ahead."

"My buddy Vaughn was doing a little light reading and he thinks he's an expert on the subject. He doesn't want me to go through with this because he's convinced you have to put an implant in my brain or something."

"We do."

_"Oh."_

"Will that be a problem?"

"No, that's uh, that's...  _fine."_

"Good. You'll want to read this carefully."

He hands Rhys a tablet. Rhys' hands shake as he scrolls through the liability waiver. The list of side effects is as long as a beach novel. It goes on, page after page of potential complications like a timer counting down to a big explosion.

"This could uh... this could kill me, couldn't it?"

"Statistically speaking, yes. But that's an impossibility. This is merely a formality. This is an experimental procedure but you're in the safest hands in the universe."

Dr Autohn taps a pen against the desk impatiently.

Rhys stares down at his second-self eyeing him from a styrofoam coffee cup, as if for a go-ahead. He hadn't touched it. He felt like there was something sinister in it.

He takes one controlled breath. And for prosperity's sake, he uses his right hand to insert his e-signature on the little dotted line.

\---

  
Yvette breaches the door to the apartment as though she is trying out for Hyperion's infantry unit. Rhys strains his flesh eye open but it is all sticky and the light hurts too much. Something is pounding against the inside of his head and demanding to be heard. Fatigue seeps into his bones and turns his limbs to lead.

He hears her slips out of her heels and her tights and leave them where they fall. It is a habit that gets in Vaughn's hair but he doesn't chew her out today. She heads over to the kitchen with two teeming bags of takeout in tow. The smell of the shrimp hits the back of his throat and makes his stomach writhe. His emerging consciousness is reminded that it is Sunday, Yvette's night off.

"So, I don't know if you know but Handsome Jack's deathday is in three weeks."

"Of course I know." Rhys can hear Vaughn's eyes rolling around in his skull. "How could I _not_ know?"

"I know, right?"

"Be nice if we got it off." Yvette hums in agreement and presses a kiss to his forehead.

"Our friend Hugo is pushing for a  _'historical edge'_." She mock-barfs and punctuates the word with air quotes. "I mean it's bad enough that he wants to reissue those stupid hanging cat posters. But he wants Alma Harren's cat to be superimposed on them. If I have to spend another minute pouring over the details of its ugly face, I swear I'm gonna scream."

"Please don't. Rhys has been at it all day."

"Really? It's that bad?"

"Yeah. He won't let me hear the end of it."

"How are you holding up?"

Rhys doesn't answer. His mouth is dry and his jaw is heavy from the analgesic. He can't justify the effort. It takes a long minute to register that the question wasn't directed at him at all. He pushes the heel of his hand against his temple.

"I'm fine. Just a little tired."

"You look like you've been up all night."

"I have. He's been pretty out of it. It's probably from the painkillers. It's not so bad right now but he's been a total headache."

Rhys wants to interject that Vaughn is not the one who had part of his brain taken out a couple of hours ago but he decides against it. He has already bled Vaughn's sympathies dry.

"Don't worry, your knight in shining armour is here. I got that salad you like."

"I've had the longest day and a half of my life and you bought me a salad. Really?"

"I'm just joking. Could you imagine? It's coconut chicken."

"You have no idea how happy I am too see you right now."

"Are you talking to me or the chicken?"

"Y'know, I've known you for four years and this is the first time you've bought me food," Vaughn remarks, unpacking the bags. Each crinkle of paper sends unsolicited shooting pains to the heart of Rhys' skull.

"Well, it's a special occasion, seeing as Rhys isn't dead and all."

"I guess."

"This isn't easy for me either. I can't spend my paycheck within the first two days and bum off you two for the next week. One of you is on sick leave and the other wasted his vacation days so he could babysit."

"I'm not babysitting. Babies take a lot less looking after."

"That's true. Speaking of, why is isn't he in bed? He looks like a corpse and it's putting me off my noodles."

"He hurled in the sheets. I'm waiting for them to dry."

"That's disgusting. Why didn't you use the spares in the closet?"

"They're drying too." Yvette wrinkles her nose and reconsiders the noodles.

"I hope you didn't use my bedsheets, they're-"

"Egyptian cotton. We know."

"The planet they came from doesn't even exist anymore."

"We didn't use your bedsheets, Yvette."

Yvette crosses the room with the corporate machismo she wears like a coat of armour, even when she's off the clock. Rhys is sprawled across their two-seater sofa like an upturned starfish, all long limbs and flushed cheeks. Yvette smiles warmly at the way his ungelled hair falls about his face. He's easier to love when he's quiet. She cups her palm against his forehead and a heat pours off him in waves.

"He's burning up."

"Yeah, I know."

"He should wear his hair down more often."

"Right?"

"He does not have the forehead for that haircut."

"That's what I've been telling him since college. I thought he'd have grown into it by now."

"I can hear you, y'know?" Rhys presses his lips together. "You should be a lot nicer to me. I almost died today."

"You didn't almost die, Rhys." Yvette chides, pushing his hair away from his face. "I read the emails. It went swimmingly."

"I like my story better. 'S more dramatic."

"Drama queen."

"This isn't fair. I was looking forward to seeing you because Vaughn's been bullying me all day. But you're just as bad as he is."

"If I were you, I'd consider myself lucky that Vaughn hadn't killed me before I'd had the chance to turn them on."

"He doesn't have a very good bedside manner."

"You're lucky to have him."

"I know. I love him. But don't tell him I said that."

"I won't."

Yvette takes in the length of his new arm, hanging limply like a doll's at his side. Her gut ties itself in knots. She unfurls each of the digits in turn and remarks how cold they are. She raises the limb for him and lays it across his stomach.

"Thanks, so, what do you think?"

"It's, uh. It's a little yellow."

"S'okay. That's my favourite colour."

"No, that's Handsome Jack's favourite colour. Your favourite colour is blue."

"Oh, yeah."

"If I were gonna chop my arm off, I'd want something pretty and understated. Not that I would chop my arm off, because I'm not an idiot."

"I tried to talk him into getting this super sleek black one," Vaughn says around a spoonful of rice. "Not that we should have any faith in Rhys' ability to make tasteful decisions."

"It is kinda tacky."

"You should go home if you're just gonna bully me."

"I _am_ home. We live together, remember?"

"No."

"You need a shower. And a shave. You stink."

"Love you too. Hey, what did you get me?"

"Not a thing. You're on nutritional formulas for two weeks. Doctor's orders."

"Sounds delicious."

"You did this to yourself. We're just enjoying an opportunity to eat something that isn't pizza for once."

"We don't eat pizza  _aaalll_ the time."

"We eat pizza every time because you have the palate of a child. I was hoping that this cybernetic venture would alter your taste buds like that guy on that wierd ECHOnet documentary you made us watch. "

"Vaughn wanted to watch it too."

"They'll make one about you next."

"A documentary about my cool arm."

"I was thinking more along the lines of a documentary about what happen to people who never eat vegetables."

"Vaughn hasn't fed me."

"For the last time, Rhys. Yes, I did."

"Give me some of your noodles."

"No."

"Just a little? I'm starving."

"I said no, Rhys."

"Please, Yvette. I'm your favourite."

"No, you're not. You're  _Vaughn's_  favourite."

"That's because I'm so charming."

"Charming? You're tolerable at best."

"We're sort-of dating so you must find me a little charming."

"Not when you are covered in puke."

"Who puked?"

 _"You_  puked."

"Did I? I really want a pizza."

"Not gonna happen."

"What is gonna happen?"

"You're gonna get some sleep and Vaughn and I will enjoy our food and wine. It's a special occasion. We never get a chance to complain about you in peace."

"I don't want any of your stupid noodles anyway. I’d rather lie here and wallow in self pity when you're ganging up against me like this."

"Get some rest before that painkiller wears off. You're grouchy when you're tired."

"Okay," Rhys says, eyes half-lidded.

"And when you can stomach solids I promise we will celebrate by ordering the biggest, fattest pizza."

"Only if it's covered in pineapple."

"Gross but sure."

"And you're not allowed to make me feel bad about it."

"Okay." Yvette pulls the comforter back up over Rhys' chest.

"And when-"

Rhys' eyes slip shut on their own.

When sleep claims him, he dreams of Vaughn and Yvette wearing drab black suits and embarking on an odyssey across the Pandoran wastes, carrying his coffin on their shoulders. Then he dreams of being trapped in a caravan. It has no windows and no doors. He is too wide to fit inside. A female voice he doesn't recognising is crying out for him. She is pounding on the other side of the wall. With two flesh hands he has to claw his way out. He dreams of waking in his room back on Eden and his mom finding his arm -- the real one -- beneath his bed. The lines of it are surgically straight.

He wakes with his head full of fever instead of bright ideas. He wakes with his head full of fever instead of bright ideas. The lights are off and he's drowning in sweat like a champion of the Hyperion Slaughter. He has endured his five circles today. He feels as though he was licked with bad tar and left in the Dust under a high noon sun. 

His hand trembles against the dire trails of red down his front. The meds are beginning to wear off and the pain hastening up his torso reminds him that most of his shoulder is gone leaving a fetid, screaming maw in its wake. There is a fierce ache where metal meets skin. It feels like it is splitting him open, like it will eat away at him, working its way across his clavicle and his chest and his neck until there is nothing left. He paints himself a vivid doomsday scenario with a kaleidoscope of sanguine reds and gangrenous yellows and clinical whites.

Rhys works himself into a clawing panic. He doesn't know where he is. He convinces himself he is going to die. He wants to cry out for Vaughn and Yvette but his tongue is sluggish and heavy and he doesn't remember their names so he strikes at the walls. The clock on the wall projects a happy four o'clock. His chest heaves and his sobs tighten the skin around his face. It is as if it's shrunk. It's a shirt two sizes two small, trapping muscle and sinew under wire and metal. He vomits down his front.

There's a hand on his shoulder and he flinches away from the touch. He's afraid of letting it close in case he'll be spirited away. They'll take him by the wrists and ankles, he's so sure of it. He's an animal in the headlights, soon to be a red smear on black asphalt with his brain beetling out of his brand new metal eye socket.

"You okay, bro? You were screaming pretty loud."

"Hurts."

"What hurts?"

"Everything." There's a hitch in Rhy's breath as he talks.

“That's your own fault for drilling holes in you. Don’t ask what’s in it." A disembodied voice say as she hands him a glass of water. Club drugs for his pity party or something that will shut him up forever. "Just drink.”

He does as he is told. The sip of water parches his dry mouth and but isn't palatable. It just makes him feel like he is going to puke again. His vision swims from the heat, like he is looking at his apartment through a tinted glass window. At least he thinks it's his apartment.

"Where am I?"

"You fell asleep on the sofa, remember?" 

"Do I live here? Do  _we_  live here?" Vaughn blanches.

"Rhys, if this is a joke, it isn't a very funny one."

"Look, it doesn't matter. Can you stand, buddy?"

"Uhh... I don't know. Don't want to know."

"You need a shower."

"'m tired, mom."

"Oh my god, Rhys."

"If I was your mom, you wouldn't have such an unfortunate face. Vaughn might have a high tolerance for your bullshit but I'm not having you stink up my apartment like a dead animal. Come on,  _up."_

Rhys unfolds his limbs beneath him. Even with two sets of hands steadying him, he stumbles like somebody who hasn't walked in a straight line since last Mercenary Day. He can feel the indignity of his position, catches it in the lines on Vaughn's face. The girl with the apartment looks pissed.

He tries to compose himself but the last of his energy is spent. It seems to have rushed south as soon as he was upright and pooled in his feet. He only has one sock on -- from the pair with the little rocket ships. He remembers that the one with the glasses got it for his birthday but not his name and his face burns with frustration.

A new wave of nausea pursues him like a shadow. Perhaps it's the same one that settled into his bones along with the anaesthetic, the one that ate his shoulder and scrambled his brains.

The apartment is only as big as three middle managers can afford in Hyperion's economic climate but getting Rhys to the bathroom is an ordeal and a half. After a handful of college parties he was never invited to, Vaughn was confident he had this down to a science. Rhys has always been a lanky thing but it's as though his weight has tripled since Vaughn collected him from the medbay. Vaughn cures his arithmetical mind as it tabulates the weight of flesh and bone and metal. They don't even get him in the shower before Rhys gives into the allure of gravity.

Yvette drops him on the toilet with a graceless thud and makes quick work of tugging off his shirt. It's more sweat and vomit than fabric and it lands on the top of the laundry hamper with a sickening squelch. Rhys glares at it like it just insulted his mother.

Vaughn's eyes trace the lines of Rhys' back. When he takes in the scabs that are turning into scarring it's easier to convince himself that this is an interim arrangement. That when the skin grows back and the arm is switched on then the freaky,  _un_ -Rhys behaviour will stop. Then he considers at the tattoos that make him look cooler than he is. And the bandage on his eye that makes him look like one of Oasis' land pirates save for the Hyperion insignia. And his flesh arm's pliant muscle and splintered fingernails versus his company brand eyesore.

The more he looks at him the more it's like he is looking at his best friend through a funhouse mirror. Vaughn knows people change. They weren't gonna be dumb college kids forever. Time brings promotions and demotions and bad news and haircuts. But at one time, Rhys couldn't buy a shirt without consulting him. Then he pulls something like  _this._

Hyperion is a disease. They knew the ratrace would make men out of them. But sometimes he's no sure he knows who Rhys even is anymore. The foundations of him are there but it's like he changed the locks without telling him. 

Yvette wringes out a flannel and cleans Rhys' face. Then she takes the dry shampoo and works it through his hair, hesitating where it stops suddenly around the implant. The fever and the kiss of the bathroom's cold air shakes his body and he looks smaller somehow. It's as though they hollowed out his cheeks to make way for the cybernetics.

"Told you a shaved side was a bad idea."

"He's full of them. Haircut included."

"Cut it out."

“You need to get better soon, bro. I can’t stand to see you like this.”

"Then leave."

_"What?"_

"You don't mean that."

"I do. I am not asking you to stay. I need people who have my back and you clearly don't so leave."

"Hey." Yvette's hand is on his arm. Vaughn blinks once, twice then clears his throat.

"You know what? Okay, man, okay. Same as always. If that's what you want, that's what I'll do. I'll go."

Rhys wants to say something but his drug addled mind can't chase it. There's a certain finality as the bathroom door slams shut. More final than the signature or the blood pressure cuff, the measuring tape, the skin marker encompassing his right arm, than the anaesthetic. Vaughn won't dignify him with anger, with thoughts, with tears. Instead he sits on the floor and presses his back up against the wall. He toys with the cord on his pajamas pants and listens to the sound of water hitting the basin and the uncomfortable conversation that follows.

Yvette emerges after a few minutes. Vaughn doesn't trust Rhys with himself but he doesn't care any more. She lets the door click behind her and settles next to him on the floor.

"I'm sure that was just the fever talking."

"Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know. Yv', you ever get the feeling that you know someone but you don't  _know_ -know them?"

"You can never know anybody up here, Vaughn. I thought you knew that."

"But this is different. We've been friends for like... since forever. And now I-"

"That's why you mother him. That's why he pulls crap like this. Because he knows you'll let him get away with it."

"I don't mother him, Yvette."

"You fold his laundry."

"Point taken."

"I'm starting to think this might not be a temporary gig. I love you both but there's only so much I can take. I'm not gonna stick around and wash crap out of his hair forever. You shouldn't either."

"He'd do the same for me."

"Nuh-uh. Remember when you had that parasite?"

 _"Please_  stop reminding me."

"Who came to visit even though your face looked like something a Kraggon spewed up? Who rotated your shifts? Who did your laundry? Who bought you a fruit basket?"

"It's not a fruit basket if you eat all of the fruit, Yvette. It's just a basket."

"Doesn't matter. Rhys gets a headcold and acts like the space station is falling out of orbit and when the tables are turned, he doesn't want to step up to the plate. He doesn't need you to take care of him. He's taking your kindness for granted."

"It's complicated."

"No, it isn't. Brain surgery is complicated. Hey, you ever see those wierd conjoined psychos they keep in R&D?"

"Don't want to know. Not my division. Not _yours_  either."

"I get around. Reminded me of you two. The little one even wore glasses. Come to think of it, I think the suits  _put_  the glasses-"

"Where are you going with this?"

"They're symbiotic. It's a metaphor. If you shoot one in the chest, the other keeps squirming."

"You're real gross sometimes, Yvette. You know that?"

"Rhys spends the night covered in puke and  _I'm_  the one that's gross? He really  _is_  your favourite."

"Yeah."

"If he wanted you to cut his food into bitesized pieces would you do it? Would you chew it for him while you’re at it?"

 _"I get it,_  Yvette. But he's sick."

"All I'm saying is you didn't sign a contract when you first met that said you would play house until you die. Just think about it, okay?"

"Okay."

They share a silence for a long minute. Then they head back into the bathroom and Rhys is sat with his head in his hands like he is in torment. Yvette shoots Vaughn a knowing look but the one Rhys gives him is softer. Vaughn feels hard as steel until Rhys' grasps at the fabric of his shirt and he is putty in his hands again.

Rhys is his brother, his constant, his kryptonite. And he feels no weaker for knowing he'll help him guide his face towards the sun.


End file.
